The Adventures Harry Richmond — Volume 7 eBook

The morning was sultry with the first rising of the
sun. I knew that Ottilia and Janet would be out.
For myself, I dared not leave the house. I sat
in my room, harried by the most penetrating snore which
can ever have afflicted wakeful ears. It proclaimed
so deep-seated a peacefulness in the bosom of the
disturber, and was so arrogant, so ludicrous, and
inaccessible to remonstrance, that it sounded like
a renewal of our midnight altercation on the sleeper’s
part. Prolonged now and then beyond all bounds,
it ended in the crashing blare whereof utter wakefulness
cannot imagine honest sleep to be capable, but a playful
melody twirled back to the regular note. He was
fast asleep on the sitting-room sofa, while I walked
fretting and panting. To this twinship I seemed
condemned. In my heart nevertheless there was
a reserve of wonderment at his apparent astuteness
and resolution, and my old love for him whispered
disbelief in his having disgraced me. Perhaps
it was wilful self-deception. It helped me to
meet him with a better face.

We both avoided the subject of our difference for
some time: he would evidently have done so altogether,
and used his best and sweetest manner to divert me:
but when I struck on it, asking him if he had indeed
told me the truth last night, his features clouded
as though with an effort of patience. To my
consternation, he suddenly broke away, with his arms
up, puffing and stammering, stamping his feet.
He would have a truce—­he insisted on a
truce, I understood him to exclaim, and that I was
like a woman, who would and would not, and wanted
a master. He raved of the gallant down-rightedness
of the young bloods of his day, and how splendidly
this one and that had compassed their ends by winning
great ladies, lawfully, or otherwise. For several
minutes he was in a state of frenzy, appealing to
his pattern youths of a bygone generation, as to moral
principles—­stuttering, and of a dark red
hue from the neck to the temples. I refrained
from a scuffle of tongues. Nor did he excuse
himself after he had cooled. His hand touched
instinctively for his pulse, and, with a glance at
the ceiling, he exclaimed, ‘Good Lord!’
and brought me to his side. ‘These wigwam
houses check my circulation,’ said he.
‘Let us go out-let us breakfast on board.’

The open air restored him, and he told me that he
had been merely oppressed by the architect of the
inferior classes, whose ceiling sat on his head.
My nerves, he remarked to me, were very exciteable.
’You should take your wine, Richie,—­you
require it. Your dear mother had a low-toned
nervous system.’ I was silent, and followed
him, at once a captive and a keeper.

This day of slackened sails and a bright sleeping
water kept the yachtsmen on land; there was a crowd
to meet the morning boat. Foremost among those
who stepped out of it was the yellow-haired Eckart,
little suspecting what the sight of him signalled
to me. I could scarcely greet him at all, for
in him I perceived that my father had fully committed
himself to his plot, and left me nothing to hope.
Eckart said something of Prince Hermann. As
we were walking off the pier, I saw Janet conversing
with Prince Ernest, and the next minute Hermann himself
was one of the group. I turned to Eckart for
an explanation.